ernestJul 11, 2023

/kbin project management costs, financing, future plans

I wrote the first line of code for /kbin on January 14, 2021. Around this time, I started working remotely and decided that the time I used to spend commuting to the office would be devoted to /kbin. Throughout this entire period, /kbin has been a hobby project that I developed in my free time. It was also when Lemmy started... #kbin #fediverse #kbinMeta

https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/177112

/kbin project management costs, financing, future plans - /kbin meta - kbin.social

I wrote the first line of code for /kbin on January 14, 2021. Around this time, I started working remotely and decided that the time I used to spend commuting to the office would be devoted to /kbin. Throughout this entire period, /kbin has been a hobby project that I developed in my free time. It was also when Lemmy started...

Show threadjonJul 11, 2023
@ernest, if Kbin starts making okay money, don't be afraid to give yourself a salary. It's important that you get to eat too.
Show threadtburkholJul 11, 2023

As I’ve been lurking around the fediverse, running instances seems to be universally a hobby project, and it’s a little concerning. It kind of gives the impression of all being idealistic young kids embarrassed to ascribe value to their own time. I mean, you can do a lot with volunteer labor, especially if it’s a good ecosystem with appropriate recognition and gratitude, but the people are absolutely the most valuable parts of kbin.social, lemmy.world, etc, and they do have to eat, pay rent, go on vacation. It’s tough to respond to a 3am message about your instance being hacked if you have a job to be at four hours later, and leads to a whole different kind of burnout.

It’s early days yet, but I hope the bigger instance teams get some input from people who’ve managed growth spurts in non-profits, and especially the transition to their first paid staff members (even when that staff member is the owner).

Show threadmelroyJul 11, 2023
Maybe this was also how the internet was intended.
Show threadelscallr
I'm not sure if you're joking but it's not that long that's how it used to be.
Jul 11, 2023 at 10:47pmWeb
Show threadmelroyJul 11, 2023

@elscallr Well some history. IPv4 (and later IPv6 now) was meant to connect computers together, ideally without any router/modem in between but each device directly on the web (but ipv6 came too late). So we got an interconnected web.

Later Tim Berners-Lee just want to have a human-readable documents to be linked together, with a distributed architecture that would see those documents stored on multiple servers, controlled by different people, and interconnected. I think the fediverse comes pretty close to this idea.

I also think big companies and centralized solutions might make it easier for the user, but we also now know all the downsides of those solutions from Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft,... you are the product.

@ernest @jon @tburkhol